Two weeks ago I wrote a blog about the dramatic changes at the top of Twitter and 5 reasons why the changes are happening. One of those was that it is struggling to translate its social media success into advertising revenue. However, advertising on Twitter is a big opportunity, particularly for those with a limited budget – maybe that’s why the advert revenue is so low!

Twitter advertising is a powerful tool allowing you to segment your audience very accurately, key for a successful inbound marketing campaign. To help you get started, here is how to set up your first Twitter campaign.

Type of Campaign

You have a choice of campaign at the start, and this will be driven by your marketing objective. Do you want to add followers to your Twitter account? Do you want to improve your Twitter engagement? Do you want to drive visitors to your website? The process is pretty similar for all campaign types, so let’s assume that you want to get people onto your website.

Compose Your Tweet

Next, you need to compose your tweet. You can choose from an existing tweet that you have already sent or write a new one. I think you should always write a new one, specifically tailored to the audience and message that you are communicating. Your tweet should contain some information about you and a reason why someone should click – a big ask in 140 characters!

You should also use the Twitter Card system for your advert. If you choose to do so, you can add an image to your advert, giving it great stand-out, as well as giving a heading to your call to action. It also helps your advert render well on mobile devices (this is where most of your audience will see your advert). There is a wide selection of call to action buttons for you to pick from such as book now, learn more, order online, etc.

Audience Segmentation

This is where you start to see the power of Twitter advertising! You are able to target your audience via the following criteria:

Location – You can get specific enough at city level, but not at town level. You are also able to import multiple locations if appropriate

Gender

Language

Devices, platforms, networks – Able to exclude desktop or mobile or particular devices

There are also a series of ‘additional criteria’ which enable you to target your audience by their behaviour:

Keywords – Able to set your keywords as broad match, exact match or even negative keywords

Followers – Here you can target the followers of a particular Twitter account – for example, if your competitor has a big presence on Twitter, you can directly promote your tweet to their followers!

Interests

Tailored audiences – You can import email addresses to see if they are on Twitter, or target people who have visited your website (with the addition of a little bit of code)

TV targeting – For the right product, this is a fantastic feature. You can add TV shows for the location that you are based in, and your adverts will be available during the airing of that show. Great opportunity for segmented messaging

Budget – You can choose between setting a daily amount or a total budget

I have used Twitter advertising with a number of clients and the results have been impressive when compared to the amount of money spent. Hopefully this will blog will give you the information you need to have a go yourself.

Have you had any success with Twitter advertising, or advertising on another social network? If so, leave a comment and share your thoughts!